I wanted to post this experience here for others that might experience a similar problem. I guarantee other drivers will have like issues in the future, will do a search, and find this thread.
On a road trip (of course!), my 2012 P85 (#1458) ran into an issue where it showed an orange light around the port, refused to Supercharge and returned an error that said that the port could not latch properly. After this, it successfully charged at 2 public L2 chargers using the J-plug adapter (SemaConnect and ChargePoint), but repeatedly showed flashing orange lights at 2 different HPWC Tesla Destination Chargers. At the HPWCs, it seemed to "connect", but at an extremely slow speed --- less than a mile an hour -- and still flashed orange the entire time. As we limped home using L2, we continued to try Superchargers, with no luck.
Back home, an absolutely AWESOME Tesla Mobile Service Tech, Mike Creer, came by my house on appointment to check things out. His hunch was that it was a port issue, but found the problem with the HPWC strange, and wasn't positive. We drove out to a close by Supercharge together, and of course, the car connected without a problem for the first time since the original issue. So we held off on the port replacement until more failures occurred. There WAS a chance that there was a problem with the charging system itself (thousands), a junction box (also expensive), and he wanted more data before making the call. The port is not a cheap replacement (hundreds), and if it turned out to be something else and a port replacement did not solve the problem, it would have been a waste.
Jump to the last 2 days. Yesterday the car showed the dreaded orange light again at an urban Supercharger. By jiggling the connector (to an unusual/atypical degree), it eventually engaged. Then today, at a regular Supercharger, we could not get the connector out of the port. Long story short it was eventually freed (a bunch of pushing and pulling), and was clear: the problem was the port.
So the port will be replaced tomorrow, and the "good news" is that it is the least costly fix to the problem. Bottom line is this: port issues do not always present themselves in an obvious way, as my case shows. Why the J Plug adapter worked and the HPWC didn't is anyone's guess. If I learn anything more after we take the old port out, I will post an addendum.
On a road trip (of course!), my 2012 P85 (#1458) ran into an issue where it showed an orange light around the port, refused to Supercharge and returned an error that said that the port could not latch properly. After this, it successfully charged at 2 public L2 chargers using the J-plug adapter (SemaConnect and ChargePoint), but repeatedly showed flashing orange lights at 2 different HPWC Tesla Destination Chargers. At the HPWCs, it seemed to "connect", but at an extremely slow speed --- less than a mile an hour -- and still flashed orange the entire time. As we limped home using L2, we continued to try Superchargers, with no luck.
Back home, an absolutely AWESOME Tesla Mobile Service Tech, Mike Creer, came by my house on appointment to check things out. His hunch was that it was a port issue, but found the problem with the HPWC strange, and wasn't positive. We drove out to a close by Supercharge together, and of course, the car connected without a problem for the first time since the original issue. So we held off on the port replacement until more failures occurred. There WAS a chance that there was a problem with the charging system itself (thousands), a junction box (also expensive), and he wanted more data before making the call. The port is not a cheap replacement (hundreds), and if it turned out to be something else and a port replacement did not solve the problem, it would have been a waste.
Jump to the last 2 days. Yesterday the car showed the dreaded orange light again at an urban Supercharger. By jiggling the connector (to an unusual/atypical degree), it eventually engaged. Then today, at a regular Supercharger, we could not get the connector out of the port. Long story short it was eventually freed (a bunch of pushing and pulling), and was clear: the problem was the port.
So the port will be replaced tomorrow, and the "good news" is that it is the least costly fix to the problem. Bottom line is this: port issues do not always present themselves in an obvious way, as my case shows. Why the J Plug adapter worked and the HPWC didn't is anyone's guess. If I learn anything more after we take the old port out, I will post an addendum.